Tania Sinel: Sanitary-Health Benefits of Automatic Soap Dispensers

Automatic soap dispensers are sometimes thought of as a simple convenience. However, they are far more than just devices that save time and effort when you wash your hands.

Automatic soap dispensers can actually be thought of as the front line defense against germs and disease. These types of soap dispensers offer important benefits that bar soap and traditional pump or lever dispensers do not, because of the simple fact that the user does not need to touch anything in order to put soap in their hands.

Clean hands are a requisite for your well-being, and the right kind of soap dispenser provides a way for you to ensure consistently clean hands, at home or at work.

Protecting yourself from germs by washing your hands regularly is a must when you consider the large numbers of bacteria and viruses you are exposed to on a daily basis, usually without even realizing it.

The statistics on communicable diseases suggest that up to 20% of people develop a case of influenza during the winter flu season. Far from being a harmless disease, influenza kills 36,000 people in the United States alone every year. The common cold can infect the same people several times a year, because your body’s immune system cannot detect different strains of the virus when they first enter your body.

Even more sinister diseases like Streptococcus infections can be caused by touching surfaces contaminated with bacteria and viruses that can survive outside the human body for several days.

Everyone knows that washing your hands with plenty of soap and hot water serves as a preventative against sickness. What you might not know is how important this simple prevention measure is for your health. Researchers at the Centers for Disease Control have estimated that half of the deaths caused by gastrointestinal germs could be avoided with proper hand washing.

Respiratory and even many food-related diseases could be drastically reduced as well. Globally, estimates have suggested that better hand-washing habits could save up to a million lives from being lost to disease. Truly, the power of soap and water should not be underestimated when it comes to keeping healthy.

If hand washing is such a powerful preventative measure, why isn’t it more widely used? One problem is the way that conventional soap dispensers are designed. Conventional soap dispensers present a problem to the user, because they require you to dispense the soap by touching the device with dirty hands. In this manner, dirty water and disease-spreading germs end up on the dispenser handle, and sometimes the nozzle as well.

Even if you clean your restroom, kitchen, or hand-washing station regularly, this problem will still arise within a few uses of the dispenser. These conventional dispensers therefore become a potential liability for their users, and may even discourage some people from using soap when they wash. In turn, these issues can lead to serious hygienic problems whether at home or at work.

Automatic soap dispensers circumvent this problem by providing each person with just the right amount of soap for hand washing when they place their hands under the nozzle. A reliable motion sensor detects the movement, and dispenses the soap through the nozzle, without needing to pull a lever or press a handle. This way, you can wash your hands in a completely hygienic fashion, without worrying about whether you are inadvertently exposing yourself to germs as you clean your hands.

Soap and water can stop disease, save lives, and prevent absences from school and work. In order for this strategy to effectively prevent diseases, however, people need to have access to automated, rather than conventional, soap dispensers. Automated soap dispensers can help improve compliance with hand washing regulations at work, and better cleanliness at home.

People are more likely to wash their hands when they know they can do so without needing to put their hands on a bar of soap others have used, or pumps, levers, or handles that create a risk for spreading additional germs. Automation therefore provides convenience and improvements in cleanliness at the same time. With so many potentially preventable diseases out there, automatic soap dispensers are a must-have tool for maintaining your health and well-being.

Ready to buy an automatic soap dispenser? Check out the Umbra Otto Automatic Soap Dispenser from Digs!